The Just Transformations to Sustainability (JTS) Initiative is excited to welcome nine postdoctoral fellows to the inaugural cohort. These scholars will contribute to the various research projects supported by JTS in collaboration with multiple faculty. JTS supports a cohort-based model of collaboration, peer-to-peer learning, and professional development for postdoctoral fellows to train the next generation of sustainability scholars as leaders of transdisciplinary research and contribute to the long-term formation of communities of practice.
Aida Arosoaie is an environmental anthropologist whose work uses multi-sited mixed methodology—namely, archival research, oral history, ethnography, collaboration, and art-making—to examine the interplay between technoscience, resource extraction, racial capitalism, and postcolonial agendas of justice. By exploring the interrelations between natural rubber cultivation, tropical forestry management, and synthetic rubber production over the past century in Malaysia and beyond, Aida’s research grapples with the social, ecological, and geopolitical entanglements produced by competing modes of resource extraction. Aida holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Carlos Calvo Hernandez is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Pulte Institute for Global Development, specializing in socio-environmental systems, climate risk, and data analysis. Carlos is conducting a Global Synthesis of the socioecological contexts of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) to create a comprehensive global database that serves as a central source repository for research and policy questions regarding the sector. Carlos holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in Policy Analysis from the RAND School of Public Policy, an M.P.A. in International Policy and Management from New York University, and a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
Yujin Hazel Lee is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow whose current work explores equitable energy transitions at a continental scale, drawing on large-scale geospatial, temporal, and socioeconomic datasets. Prior to joining JTSI, Hazel earned her Ph.D. in Regional Science from Cornell University, and holds a B.A. in International Studies and M.I.S. in Development Cooperation from Ewha Womans University in South Korea. She has also worked in Ethiopia with the Korean government, and the World Bank as a short-term Consultant.
Nabin Pradhan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the JTS Initiative. His research examines contemporary sustainability challenges, with a particular focus on climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality. His work takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on sustainability science, public policy, geography, applied econometrics, and data science. He uses computational and data-driven methods, including causal inference, geospatial analysis, remote sensing, machine learning, climate model outputs, and large-scale survey data, to examine how environmental change affects human well-being and inequality and how public policies and institutions can support more equitable and sustainable development. He holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Sustainability from the University of Michigan.
Paula Sarmiento is a postdoctoral research fellow at the JTS Initiative, where she leads research on Amazon conservation. Her research and teaching focus on environmental economics and sustainable development. She is an environmental economist working on applied microeconomic and environmental policy research related to climate solutions. Paula earned her doctorate in Environmental Policy from Duke University (USA) and she holds a master's and undergraduate degree in Economics from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia).
Guangcan Su is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Integrated Assessment of Data Centers cohort at the University of Notre Dame. His research combines life cycle assessment, techno-economic analysis, geospatial modeling, and artificial intelligence to evaluate the environmental and economic implications of emerging energy and infrastructure systems. At Notre Dame, he will investigate how data center growth affects electricity demand, water use, carbon emissions, and communities across Indiana and the Midwest to support more informed and equitable infrastructure decisions. Before joining Notre Dame, Guangcan was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Northwestern University, where he led sustainability assessments of direct air capture and carbon dioxide conversion technologies. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Universiti Malaya.
Clare Sullivan is a postdoctoral research fellow at the JTS Initiative. She is working with the community-based conservation evidence synthesis working group to evaluate the status, impacts, and potential of community conservation in land and marine systems globally. Her work combines field data, data science, spatial data and remote sensing to analyze the social, ecological, and climate impacts of different land management and conservation strategies in tropical systems. Clare has a doctorate in Geography from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with Dr. Holly Gibbs. She completed a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, with a concentration in environmental science and policy. She has a Bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis.
Hannah Yin is a postdoctoral research fellow with Notre Dame’s JTS Initiative, leading and facilitating quantitative research for the synthesis working group “Climate Change, Biodiversity, & Environmental Justice: A Synthesis of Ecological & Socioeconomic Risks” developed in partnership between JTS and the University of Michigan's Institute for Global Change Biology (IGCB). In transitioning to this role at Notre Dame’s JTS Initiative, Hannah completed her doctorate in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Rice University and her undergraduate degree from Tufts University, where she double-majored in Biology and Computer Science.
Rafia Zaman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with JTS Initiative, contributing to an integrated assessment of data center growth in Indiana and the Midwest. Applying an environmental and resource governance lens, her work examines how this growth is governed and how benefits, costs, and risks related to electricity, water, land, housing, and local employment are distributed across host and neighboring communities. Prior to joining Notre Dame, she was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Rafia holds a PhD in Environmental Systems Sciences, with a focus on Sustainability and Innovation Management, from the University of Graz in Austria. She also holds an MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand and a BBA from Khulna University in Bangladesh.